


12 Years of Christmas

by anawitch



Category: RWBY
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Family, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:16:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anawitch/pseuds/anawitch
Summary: Christmas comes to mean something to Yang and Mercury.





	12 Years of Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> [Stella](http://dropthegraceart.tumblr.com/tagged/stella-xiao-long) is [dropthegraceart](http://dropthegraceart.tumblr.com)‘s baby, I just borrowed her. Merry (one week till) Christmas!

****1.** **

The streets are alight with Christmas, apartments twinkling with their predetermined patterns, on, off, on, off, just like the debate warring in her mind. Normally the sight would fill her full with festive cheer. Now it’s only rubbing salt in the wound.

Her foot drags through the sprinkling of snow. It’s not broken, probably sprained, but it throbs like a bitch even in the cold. At least the blood that drips from her nose does something in the way of warming her up, and she needs it; if there are Christmas lights, she’s still a long way from her destination. When the decorations turn to broken glass and boarded windows, that’s when she knows she’s in the right place. She presses the button and waits for the muffled ring to be met with a response.

“Yeah?” comes his drawl over the intercom. She cringes. If there were anyone else…

“You gonna let me in?”

A few minutes pass before he’s at the door. Mercury eyes her up and down in the way he always does, like he doesn’t trust her, like he’s checking her out. He lingers on her bloodstained jacket and smirks.

“What? Need a band-aid?”

“A place to stay.”

She prays she doesn’t look too pathetic, cold and bleeding on his snow-dusted doorstep, but even if she does, every ounce of pride has long since been swallowed. There’s no dignified way to ask your too-many-night’s stand to spend Christmas together, but she has no other choice.

It’s no neater than usual inside, piles of clothes and dirty dishes on every surface. The heavy scent of cigarette smoke carries through the thin walls, and she hears a rhythmic knocking in time with a distant carol.

“I missed my last flight.” He doesn’t ask, but she needs to explain before he gets the wrong idea. “There’s no more till Thursday. That __asshole__  dragged me all across the city, and I was so close to taking him in – I couldn’t let him get away.”

“And here’s me thinking you just wanted to see me.”

“Please,” Yang rolls her eyes as he encroaches her personal space. “This was a last resort.”

He kisses her, and despite her bad mood she doesn’t resist – on the contrary, if there’s anything Mercury’s good for it’s taking her mind off a terrible day. He strips her of her jacket, smirks at her wince. There are cuts and bruises on every stretch of skin, and the chase has left her disgusting and sweaty. He doesn’t care. His warm hands trail over her body, her waist, her stomach, her breasts, filling her with heat.  

Arms around his neck, she pulls back and cocks an eyebrow. “Really? Blood and sweat is doing it for ya?”

 “Guess so,” he says, and kisses her again.

Much later, she redresses herself in his clothes, her own in dire need of washing. It’s an ill-fitted t-shirt, but he watches her walk around in it like he’s hypnotised until she joins him in bed, burying herself beneath his sheets with a heavy sigh.

“Dad’s so disappointed. He sent three different sad-faces. I didn’t even know he knew where the emojis were.”

He snorts.

“I’ve never spent Christmas without them before. This sucks.”

It’s only his sleepiness, his post-orgasm haze, that compels him to draw her in, but Yang appreciates it nonetheless. There’s no heating in his shitty little apartment, and he’s still warm and so comfortable. Against his neck, she asks, “Are you doing anything tomorrow?”

“Nah.”

Of course he’s not. There’s no decorations, no cards, no chance Mercury celebrates Christmas. It makes her sad somehow, and not just because it means she has to spend the day without it. Bad as he can be, she can’t help but wonder how he would have spent his day without her, and even though she knows he doesn’t care, she wishes he knew that he should.

“You wanna go out for dinner? I know a guy who owns a __kinda__ nice restaurant who owes me a favour.”

Mercury looks down at her and cocks an eyebrow. “You asking me on a date?”

“Pff, no,” she says, contorting her face in what she hopes looks like disgust. “We’re just two old enemies getting food together. Totally normal.” After spending the night cuddling. Christmas night.

Mercury laughs and says, “Sure.”

It has her thinking about the other possibilities she’d ignored in preference of him, like a cheap hotel in the city’s centre, like taking a hot shower and an early night so she could call her sister first thing in the morning. If there were anyone else, she still would have ended up in Mercury’s bed, watching his frustratingly handsome face instead of getting the sleep she needed. She didn’t know why she kept lying to herself.

“What?” He notices, eyes opening to meet hers. Casually she moves her gaze to the window, deflecting with the first thing that come to mind.

“It’s snowing again.”

  

 

* * *

****2.** **

It’s snowing again, and the cold is less forgiving in the bathroom. A happy little holiday jingle plays somewhere downstairs. She waits until the tenth minute passes on her scroll’s screen before taking the plastic in her hand. Everything she’s been through, and it’s the most intimidating thing she’s ever seen: two blue lines, stark and undeniable on the little white screen.

__Shit._ _

In a matter of minutes, she filters through every stage of grief. __Maybe the test’s faulty. Why me? It’s not fair. Please, please, let this be a dream so I can wake up tomorrow and do things right. This is the end of my life.__

Those two blue lines stare up at her from the toilet seat. Startling, real, permanent. She sits on the floor and takes a shaky breath, wracking her brain for what to do next.

The door opens. She knocks the test from sight. Mercury cocks a brow as he looks down at her, equal parts amused and surprised.

“Getting old, Blondie?”

“Shouldn’t have had that last glass,” she agrees. He extends a hand and she takes it. In the mirror behind him she sees her pallor reflection, and his conclusion seems fair. If only drink __was__ what had her so sick.

He tugs her into him and slides his hand down her back to her pants, slipping it inside to cup her bare ass. “Brush your teeth and I’ll still fuck ya before you go,” and with a groan she slaps his wrist away - genuine concern knots his brows, and he takes her arm before she can flee. “Hey. Are you good?”

Why hide it?

“I’m pregnant.”

The floor is about as comfortable as the shitty bed they spent the last night in, so they sit there together, Yang’s knees to her chest, Mercury’s metal foot tapping anxiously on splintered wood.

“I always wanted a kid,” Yang says. “I love kids, I’m __good__  with kids, but I don’t wanna ‘settle down’. I always thought I’d be a fun aunt first, y’know? So I can take them home for the weekend but give them back when I’m bored?”

Mercury’s silence is deafening. She doesn’t blame him. She’s surprised he didn’t run the second she uttered the word, but she appreciates his presence, now, tense as it might be. It’s not like she can tell anyone else.

“I thought about if this ever happened. Like, before I was ready. Just get it sucked out of me, right? No brainer. I’ve got too much to do. I never got why women who didn’t want kids ended up with kids. Like… why didn’t my mom just get rid of me? Only, I don’t know. It’s not as black and white now. Maybe it’s weird pregnancy hormones trying to trap me.”

“Is it mine?”

“Yeah.” There’s no doubt about it. Ridiculously, it makes her almost sheepish. “I, uh. I haven’t been with anyone else in… a long time.”

The tapping stops. She can see the gears turning. “Shit,” he realises. “Me too.” They’re a long way from the casual fling they once were, that they were supposed to be. Being crazy for someone had never made as much sense as it did with Mercury; caring so deeply for the man who’d put her through so much pain was downright insane.

That’s the problem. That’s why it isn’t so clear cut.  

“I don’t know. We’re hot. This’d be the cutest damn baby the world would ever see.”

Their situation isn’t entirely devoid of humour; to her relief, he snorts. He concedes her point with a nod of his head, then makes his own. “Yeah, but we’ve got bad parent genes.”

“One bad parent each. Maybe the good parent balances it out.”

“I think we’re great examples of how fifty-fifty that is.”

“You’re better than you used to be.”

“There’s a reason I’m late.”

Right. He was supposed to be up an hour ago to say goodbye – Christmas is just a few days away, and after that she has no clue when she’ll see him again. Probably sooner rather than later, now, if he doesn’t turn tail the second she’s out the door. She takes another look at her scroll and curses, jumps to her feet and haphazardly packs the remainder of her things. There isn’t time to talk; if she doesn’t get moving she’ll miss her flight, and she can’t stand the thought of letting down her family again.

Mercury’s standing awkwardly once she’s done, struggling to fill the silence. Yang takes his cheeks in her hands and pulls him down for a kiss.

“I’ll call you when I land,” she promises.

But she’s only half way down the stairs before she’s found his name in her contacts, and in one ring he’s on the other end.

“Sup?” he answers.

“Just so I’ve got all the facts, here – if I __did__ decide to keep it, is that… I mean, would that be it between us, or would you __want__ to be involved? Or…”

“Yeah.” His response comes quicker than expected. “No, I still- I think.”

She breathes a laugh. How can she even consider it? In no sense of the word does ‘parental’ apply to them, nor ‘healthy’, nor ‘stable’. Keeping a child would be irresponsible, surely, and yet… she can’t rule out the want completely. She pictures her Christmas spent lying her way out of eggnog, writing out lists of pros and cons, hiding in the bathroom whispering to Mercury miles and miles away, erring between life changing decisions she never expected to need to make.  

When she passes the front desk, the receptionist tells her, “Merry Christmas.”

 

 

* * *

  ** **3.****

“Merry Christmas!”

Mercury blinks in the artificial light, groans and shields his eyes from its glare. The world outside their bed is freezing, but Yang’s already taken the plunge, all dressed and ready for their first Christmas - first __real__ Christmas. Who cares if it’s only five in the morning? (Mercury, probably. Stealthily she moves the alarm clock from sight).

He makes a move to pull the blankets over his face, but Yang is prepared; in an instant his naked body is exposed to the elements, and though his attempt to snatch it back is valiant, he’s no match for the sheer strength of Yang’s festive cheer.

“Get up and get dressed, asshole. You need to see Stella’s new pyjamas.”

She’s such a pretty little thing, a mess of bushy silver hair and big lilac eyes, chubby arms and legs wrapped warm in the most adorable fluffy purple onesie. Though she’s clueless as to what all the lights and tinsel mean she giggles and smiles up at Yang, and it’s so damn hard not to melt every single time.

There are presents beneath the tree, and Yang helps her rip them open, putting on a show of surprise at every teddy bear they’ve bought and wrapped, every toy car, every illustrated book. Stella doesn’t understand but loves every second she has tearing the brightly coloured paper between her tiny fingers. It’s pure delight.

“You know, we spent money on that crap,” Mercury tells her through his yawn, mock-stern. He can’t resist the way she grins up at him, though, failing to hide his own in return. “Just get her glitter paper next year. Saves us time.”  

Yang laughs, pretends to pout. “What’s she gonna play with when she’s torn it all up?”

He gestures to the pile. Admittedly, there’s a lot. That’s what happens when, against all odds, you’re the first to have a baby. Weiss’s gifts are large and lavishly decorated, white glossy paper and silver ribbons. Blakes’ are smaller, suspiciously flat and thin, red and green and traditional. And Ruby’s… well, hers look as if they were wrapped by an eager six-year-old, but the thought is there, and Stella loves the extra bows they’re plastered with most of all.

With every present out in the open, he liberates her of their daughter, and she babbles excitedly in his arms. Yang’s strangest dreams would never have conjured an image so bizarre - some mornings she still starts to see him there, concocts a desperate plan to get him out the house before her family visit. Now they’re the ones visiting – or will be, if they get moving. He bounces Stella on his hip while Yang collects their overnight bag, wrestling soggy paper from her gums.

“You’re gross, you know that?” Another giggle tells them she doesn’t care.

“Don’t listen to him, Stella. He loves you. And your grossness.”

“You’re alright.”

“Take it,” Yang tells her as she packs her new toys. “That’s peak affection.”

Yang drives, because she doesn’t have time for how wrong Mercury is behind the wheel, and she’s not risking an argument on Christmas day. Mercury’s too nervous, anyway – not that he’d ever admit it – but she notices the distracted way he taps his fingers on the door, the hand that hides his lips as he stares vacantly at hilly fields rolling by. It’s not the first time he’s met her family, but it’s the first time they’ve done anything __as__ a family - them, Ruby, Taiyang, Qrow. There’s no doubt in her mind it’s going to be a mess, but they owed it to Stella to at least try and be normal where they could. Perhaps a Christmas miracle is exactly what they need.  

Ruby’s already waiting for them at the doorstep. She bounds towards the car and hops up and down in her excitement, snatching Stella from Mercury’s arms the moment they’re both free.

“Oh, look at how cute you are!” she gushes, and squeezes her niece to her chest.

“Thanks. I put my nice shirt on.”

“Not __you__ , Merc. She’s so big! How did she get so big? Do all babies grow this fast?”

“Hello, my little star!” Taiyang fawns over her, and he’s pinching her cheeks, kissing her tiny forehead and holding her little hands in his. It’s a long five minutes of love before her dad and sister even realise she’s there, she’s sure, and then there’s hugs all around and one slightly awkward handshake for Mercury, but for once when Taiyang looks at him there’s no malice, no threat. That’s progress. In his defence, it had to be pretty difficult to hear his daughter was dating Salem’s former henchman, but what surprises her is having Stella makes things easier. Now they have something in common, something to talk about.

“How’s she been? Did she like her presents?” Taiyang asks him.

“Uh, I guess. She liked the paper.”

“Couldn’t keep it out her mouth? Ruby was the same. When she was six…”

Their voices disappear beneath Zwei’s familiar yaps, and Yang can’t stop smiling. In her strangest dreams she never would have conjured a scenario so bizarre, but now that it’s happening, there’s nothing she would change.

“Earth to Yang. It’s freezing! Are you coming inside?” Ruby asks, nudging her arm.

Yang blinks. The bag’s still in the trunk, so she nods and makes her way around.

“Uh-huh,” she says. “I’ll be right there.”    

 

 

* * *

****4.** **

“I’ll be right there.”

Her heart hammers, because she’s lying - it’s a good two-hour drive, and the roads are treacherous, slick with ice. Outside is dark, moon overcast, clouds heavy with the promise of further snow. She holds her scroll under her ear as she pulls on her coat, fingers fumbling with buttons.  

“Yeah, well, hurry - he’ll be out again soon.”

Emerald hangs up.

Yang loads Stella into her car seat, wraps her warm in her favourite blanket. Sleep weighs her eyelids down, winning the fight against natural curiosity. She’s out again in a matter of seconds. The engine doesn’t wake her.

It’s snowing again before they reach the end of their road. Typical.

Did Emerald sound worried? Yang replays their brief conversation, squinting through the thick flakes that smudge her windscreen. It’s been a week with no contact, but that’s not unusual - it happens in their line of work, radio silence. It’s Christmas Eve, and she’d expected a call in the morning, an apology veiled in jokes and insults, secretly genuine - not half an hour until midnight, not from his partner. Yang squeezes the wheel and turns on the radio, but the cheery music does little to quell her rising panic. It mocks her, like that night two years ago, only this time it’s a little more than ten minutes until she knows one way or another.

“Merry Christmas!” the radio presenter says when the clock strikes midnight. Yang glances at Stella in the rear-view mirror, perfectly peaceful. Oblivious. Young enough not to remember the Christmas they missed rushing to her idiot dad’s side, she hopes.  By the time they reach Emerald’s it’s almost three, snow a good six inches deep making walking up her driveway a challenge. The door’s already open, and Emerald raises her eyebrows at Stella in Yang’s arms.

“You brought the kid?”

“How am I gonna find a babysitter on Christmas Eve?”

“Good point. Don’t freak out – it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Oh, but it looks __bad.__ A symphony of bruises yellow through black mar the skin held together with stitches and bandages, and Yang can’t hide her shock; in all their time fighting together, fighting __each other__ , she’s never seen him so beaten. A low-ranking criminal couldn’t have done this. Stella sleeps soundly against her shoulder as she leans over him, touches his face.

“It was a trap. Obviously. Someone with a grudge against us. The fight attracted grimm, and we had to lead them away from the village.” Emerald folds her arms, shakes her head at the slow rise of Mercury’s chest. “He’s picking up your bad habits, taking hits for other people. Also, he’s pretending to sleep to see if we’ll say nice things about him.”

Yang finds a particularly sore spot to prod and like magic he’s up, yelping, face contorted in a painful grimace. She wants to say he deserves it, but guilt tugs at her conscience - it takes a moment for him to focus on her, and she realises that while it may not be as bad as it looks, it’s still not good.

“The hell are you wearing?” he asks.

“My Christmas sweater, asshole. I got us matching ones. I didn’t have time to pack yours and Stella’s.” __Because for a second there I thought you were dying and couldn’t think straight__ goes unsaid.

“Good.” It takes him a minute, but eventually he manages to hold out his arms, and she knows he wants his daughter even before he says, “Give.”

Emerald leaves them to their reunion. It’s been little over a week, and Yang can’t believe how much she’s missed him, teasing and all. Any other time of the year and weeks apart are nothing, par for the course for them to work in far off cities, to take it in turns watching Stella while they do what they do best. Maybe it’s Christmas. All the lights and the tinsel and the cheery carols have come to mean something for their weird little family - just the threat of spending it alone, now, feels wrong.

“No more December jobs. For either of us.”

She expects him to argue it, but to her surprise Mercury nods into Stella’s hair. “Didn’t think it’d take this long. Sorry. Did she worry?”

“A little. She stayed up all night eating boxes of chocolate and watching cheesy Christmas movies. I was fine, though.”

Even Mercury’s laugh sounds sore. When she finally collapses in bed beside him it’s just a few short hours until sunrise. She’s so very careful not to disturb his wounds, to upset Stella lying between them, and though she knows in the morning she’ll regret their midnight drive, right then the relief is too strong for her to care.

It’s an awkward thing, living the lives they want and balancing a toddler in tow, but they’re figuring it out. Before she sleeps she stretches to kiss his cheek, and she’s not even sure he’s awake when she tells him she loves him, but for once it feels important to say.

A tired hand gropes for hers beneath the duvet, and quietly, he says, “I love you too.”

 

****

* * *

  ** **5.****

In the freezing late December the window is wide open, an attempt to air out the heat that suffocates of the Xiao-Long Rose kitchen. A misjudgement of minutes drowns the delicious smell of turkey and roasting vegetables beneath a thick cloud of smoke that pours from the kitchen into the living room, where an abomination of tables of different sizes stretches through, a bright red table cloth on top in an attempt to unify them. Five of the nine chairs are occupied, and their inhabitants watch the commotion with looks that range from disappointed to cautious amusement. Mercury does his part and drops a bowl of sprouts at the centre, and Yang and Ruby help Taiyang to fan away the smoke, and Qrow sinks back in his seat and pours himself another drink.

“You guys suck,” Stella says.

And then she bursts into laughter.

It takes them down like dominos. Blake hides her snickers behind her hand, hesitant to offend. Weiss’s is something close to sympathy, but then she wheezes and the giggle fit comes on in full. Emerald’s laughter is hysterical; she throws back her head and cackles, points at Mercury but can’t stifle herself long enough to speak.

“We __tried__!” Ruby comes in fast, carrying plates of roast potatoes and parsnips and carrots in her arms. Indignantly she pouts down at her niece, and only makes matters worse.

“How did you fail so hard!?” Stella asks through shaky breaths. “You’ve done this, like, a trillion times!”

“Your mother was distracting your father,” Taiyang replies, an air of irritation in his tone that won’t last as long as he’d like.

“Ugh, gross.”

“Don’t put this on me, old man,” Yang says through sniggers of her own. “You’re the one who forgot to set the timer.”

It’s a mess, but a salvageable one; the burn is hardly noticeable under the sea of gravy and cranberry sauce, and it’s still miles away from what he grew up with, disappointing ready meals microwaved by his mom while dad polished off his fourth bottle of discount beer. Stella helps herself to more roast potatoes. She’s not doing anything wrong (that he can tell), but still, mischief ignites her face, her mom’s sunny grin a permanent fixture as she wolfs down more than any 9 year old should. He might not be the best dad, but he knows he’s better than his, and for the first time in a long time he thinks of him, of the things he told him he was, of the things he told him he’d never be.

It took a while and a couple of false starts, but as Mercury looks at his family, he realises his dad was wrong.  

**Author's Note:**

> In Ruin chapter 26 is on its way! I had a minor issue with Microsoft Word finally getting sick of me not renewing my subscription (oops lmao) which set me back a bit but with any luck it'll be out before Christmas! Until then, I hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
